LONDON, Ky. (AP) — The man suspected of opening fire on a highway in Kentucky sent a text message vowing to “kill a lot of people” less than 30 minutes before he shot and wounded five people on Interstate 75, authorities said in an arrest warrant.

“I’m going to kill a lot of people. Well try at least,” Joseph Couch, 32, wrote in the text message, according to the warrant affidavit filed in court. In a separate text message, Couch wrote, “I’ll kill myself afterwards,” the affidavit says.

The Lexington Herald-Leader identified the woman Couch sent the text messages to as his ex-wife. The affidavit does not describe the relationship between Couch and the woman who received the texts.

The affidavit, written by Capt. Richard Dalrymple of the Laurel County Sheriff’s Office, said that before authorities received the first report of the shooting about 5:30 p.m. Saturday, a dispatcher in Laurel County received a call from a woman who told them Couch had sent her the text messages at 5:03 p.m.

In response to that call, police initiated a tracker on Couch’s cellphone but location wasn’t received until 6:53 p.m., the affidavit states, almost 90 minutes after the highway shooting.

The affidavit obtained by The Associated Press charges Couch with five counts each of criminal attempt to commit murder and first-degree assault.

On Sunday, the day after the shooting, law enforcement officers searched an area near the location where Couch’s vehicle was found, with a view of I-75.

There, they found a green Army-style duffel bag, ammunition and numerous spent shell casings, the affidavit says. A short distance away, they found a Colt AR-15 rifle with a site mounted to the weapon and several additional magazines. The duffel bag had “Couch” hand-written in black marker.

Searchers have been combing the rugged, hilly near London, a small city of about 8,000 people about 75 miles (120 kilometers) south of Lexington. Authorities vowed to keep up their relentless pursuit in the densely wooded area as local residents worried about where the shooter might turn up next.

“We’re not going to quit until we do lay hands on him,” Laurel County Sheriff John Root said, with the search area covering thousands of acres (hectares).

Christina DiNoto, who witnessed the shooting Saturday while driving on I-75, said Monday that it weighed heavily on her mind.

“To know that he’s still at large — that makes me nervous, honestly,” she said.

DiNoto, an IT project manager, said the shooting also unlocked a new kind of fear, “like you have to be scared to even just drive on the highways.”

Meanwhile, more than a dozen school districts shut down Monday across a wide swath of southeastern Kentucky as the grueling search for Couch stretched into a third day.

Donna Hess, who lives 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the shooting scene in rural Laurel County, agreed with the decision to close schools there. Both of her children, a first grader and preschooler, normally take the bus.

“I’d be afraid he’d try to hijack the bus and take the kids as hostages,” Hess said. “I’m worried about everybody because they don’t know where he’s at. I’m hoping they catch him soon. We don’t know what he’s capable of right now.”

Capt. Richard Dalrymple of the Laurel County Sheriff’s Office said authorities are doing everything they can.

“The longer we continue, and the more area we clear and the more places we are sure he is not, the safer people are going to be,” he said. “And I’m confident eventually we’ll figure it out and we’ll find him.”

State police Master Trooper Scottie Pennington, a spokesman for the London post, said troopers are being brought in from across the state to aid in the search focused on a remote area about 8 miles (13 kilometers) north of London. He described the extensive search area as “walking in a jungle” with machetes needed to cut through thickets.

Couch most recently lived in Woodbine, a small community about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of the shooting scene. Authorities said he purchased the weapon and about 1,000 rounds of ammunition Saturday morning in London.

Kentucky has few regulations on purchasing guns and carrying them in public. The state’s gun laws “are among the worst in the country” according to a report by Everytown For Gun Safety, a gun safety nonprofit group.

A man who fatally shot five co-workers at a Louisville bank in 2023 wrote in his journal that he was surprised he could buy an AR-15 and 120 rounds in less than an hour. He wrote that it was “so easy” despite his history of mental illness.

Kentucky legislators repealed a law in 2019 that required a permit for carrying a concealed weapon. The state also does not require a background check at the point of purchase.

The U.S. Army said in a statement that Couch was in the Army Reserve from March 2013 to January 2019 as a combat engineer who was a private when he left and had no deployments.

Authorities said the shooter fired 20 to 30 rounds, striking 12 vehicles on the interstate Saturday.

DiNoto, 39, was driving through Kentucky with a friend on her way back to Houston after visiting relatives in Rochester, New York, when they heard a loud noise Saturday and assumed a rock had hit her back windshield. Her friend wondered whether it was gunshots, but they quickly dismissed the possibility.

The driver of a truck in the next lane slumped over and pulled to the side of the road, but DiNoto assumed the cause was something like a tire blowout. They saw first responders barreling down the highway but didn’t realize there’d been a shooting until the friend’s dad called to check on them 90 minutes later.

“We were in the middle of nowhere, Kentucky, and it was just like, what? Somebody was on an overpass shooting AR-15 at us?” DiNoto said.

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Associated Press reporters Tara Copp in Washington, Leah Willingham in Charleston, West Virginia, and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this story.

HOUSTON (AP) — Strong storms with damaging winds and baseball-sized hail pummeled Texas on Tuesday, leaving one person dead and about 1 million businesses and homes without power as much of the U.S. recovered from severe weather, including tornadoes, that killed at least 24 people during the Memorial Day holiday weekend.

Widespread outages were reported across a wide swath of storm-weary Texas, where an oppressive, early-season heat wave added to the misery. Voters in the state’s runoff elections found dozens of polling places without power. Dallas County said it would keep polls open two hours later because of the outages Tuesday.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins declared a disaster and noted that some nursing homes were using generators. “This ultimately will be a multiday power outage situation,” Jenkins said Tuesday.

Social media posts showed winds pushing one American Airlines plane away from a gate at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

The airline said in a statement that the severe weather, including straight-line wind gusts up to 80 mph, affected several parked and unoccupied aircraft. No one was injured.

“Our maintenance team is currently conducting thorough inspections and will make any needed repairs,” the statement said.

The airport said in an email to The Associated Press that about 500 flights were canceled because of the weather. Nearly another 200 flights were canceled at Dallas Love Field Airport, according to the website FlightAware.

Around Houston, cars crawled through flooded highways and more than 300,000 customers were without power in the area, which includes parts still recovering from hurricane-force winds earlier this month.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that a 16-year-old boy died when a home under construction began to shift and then collapsed during a thunderstorm in the Houston suburb of Magnolia. The teen was confirmed to be an employee of the construction company and was authorized to be on the site, the statement said.

An East Houston school district issued a shelter-in-place order and directed buses with students back to their campuses in the afternoon until the weather subsided.

Destructive storms over the weekend caused deaths in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia. Meanwhile in the Midwest, an unusual weather phenomenon called a “gustnado” that looks like a small tornado brought some dramatic moments to a western Michigan lake over the weekend.

Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell will travel to Arkansas on Wednesday as the Biden administration continues assessing the damage from the weekend tornadoes.

Seven people were killed in Cooke County, Texas, from a tornado that tore through a mobile home park Saturday, officials said, and an additional seven deaths were reported across Arkansas.

Two people died in Mayes County, Oklahoma, east of Tulsa, authorities said. The injured included guests at an outdoor wedding. A Missouri man died Sunday after a tree limb fell onto his tent as he was camping.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said five people had died in his state during storms that struck close to where a devastating swarm of twisters killed 81 people in December 2021. One family lost their home for a second time on the same lot where a twister leveled their house less than three years ago.

Roughly 150,000 homes and businesses lacked electricity midday Tuesday in Louisiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, West Virginia and Missouri.

It has been a grim month of tornadoes and severe weather in the nation’s midsection.

Tornadoes in Iowa last week left at least five people dead and dozens injured. Storms killed eight people in Houston this month. April had the second-highest number of tornadoes on record in the country. The storms come as climate change contributes in general to the severity of storms around the world.

Late May is the peak of tornado season, but the recent storms have been exceptionally violent, producing very strong tornadoes, said Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University.

“Over the weekend, we’ve had a lot of hot and humid air, a lot of gasoline, a lot of fuel for these storms. And we’ve had a really strong jet stream as well. That jet stream has been aiding in providing the wind shear necessary for these types of tornadoes,” Gensini said.

Harold Brooks, a senior scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, said a persistent pattern of warm, moist air is to blame for the string of tornadoes over the past two months.

That air is at the northern edge of a heat dome bringing temperatures typically seen at the height of summer to late May.

The heat index — a combination of air temperature and humidity to indicate how the heat feels to the human body — reached triple digits in parts of south Texas and was expected to stay there for several days.

For more information on recent tornado reports, see The Associated Press Tornado Tracker.

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Associated Press journalists around the country contributed to this report, including Paul J. Weber, Ken Miller, Jennifer McDermott, Sarah Brumfield, Kathy McCormack, Acacia Coronado, Jeffrey Collins, Bruce Schreiner, Julio Cortez and Valerie Gonzalez.

A series of powerful storms swept over the central and southern U.S. over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, killing at least 22 people and leaving a wide trail of destroyed homes, businesses and power outages.

The destructive storms caused deaths in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kentucky and were just north of an oppressive, early season heat wave setting records from south Texas to Florida.

Forecasters said the severe weather could shift to the East Coast later Monday and warned millions of people outdoors for the holiday to watch the skies. A tornado watch was issued from North Carolina to Maryland.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who earlier declared a state of emergency, said at a Monday press conference that five people had died in his state. The fifth death was a 54-year-old man who had a heart attack while cutting fallen trees in Caldwell County in western Kentucky, the governor’s office said.

The death toll of 22 also included seven deaths in Cooke County, Texas, from a Saturday tornado that tore through a mobile home park, officials said, and eight deaths across Arkansas.

Two people died in Mayes County, Oklahoma, which is east of Tulsa, authorities said. The injured included guests at an outdoor wedding.

The latest community left with shattered homes and no power was the tiny Kentucky town of Charleston, which took a direct hit Sunday night from a tornado that the governor said appeared to be on the ground for 40 miles (64 kilometers).

“It’s a big mess,” said Rob Linton, who lives in Charleston and is the fire chief of nearby Dawson Springs, hit by a tornado in 2021. “Trees down everywhere. Houses moved. Power lines are down. No utilities whatsoever – no water, no power.”

Further east, some rural areas of Hopkins County hit by the 2021 tornado around the community of Barnsley were damaged again Sunday night, said county Emergency Management Director Nick Bailey.

“There were a lot of people that were just getting their lives put back together and then this,” Bailey said. “Almost the same spot, the same houses and everything.”

Beshear has traveled to the area where his father grew up several times for ceremonies where people who lost everything were given the keys to their new homes.

The visits came after a series of tornadoes on a terrifying night in December 2021 killed 81 people in Kentucky.

“It could have been much worse,” Beshear said of the Memorial Day weekend storms. “The people of Kentucky are very weather aware with everything we’ve been through.”

More than 400,000 customers across the eastern U.S. were without power Monday afternoon, including about 125,000 in Kentucky. Twelve states reported at least 10,000 outages earlier in the day, according to PowerOutage.us.

The area on highest alert for severe weather Monday is a broad swath of the eastern U.S., from Alabama to New York.

President Joe Biden sent condolences to the families of people who died. He said the Federal Emergency Management Agency is on the ground conducting damage assessments and he has contacted governors to see what federal support they might need..

It’s been a grim month of tornadoes and severe weather in the nation’s midsection.

Tornadoes in Iowa last week left at least five people dead and dozens injured. Storms killed eight people in Houston earlier this month. The severe thunderstorms and deadly twisters have spawned during a historically bad season for tornadoes, at a time when climate change contributes to the severity of storms around the world. April had the second-highest number of tornadoes on record in the country.

Harold Brooks, a senior scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, said a persistent pattern of warm, moist air is to blame for the string of tornadoes over the past two months.

That warm moist air is at the northern edge of a heat dome bringing temperatures typically seen at the height of summer to late May.

The heat index — a combination of air temperature and humidity to indicate how the heat feels to the human body — neared triple digits in parts of south Texas on Monday. Extreme heat was also forecast for San Antonio and Dallas.

In Florida, Melbourne and Ft. Pierce set new daily record highs Monday. Both hit 98 F (36.7 C). Miami set a record high of 96 F (35.5 C) on Sunday.

For more information on recent tornado reports, see The Associated Press Tornado Tracker.

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Schreiner reported from Louisville, Kentucky. Associated Press reporters Acacia Coronado in Austin, Texas, and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.

GEORGETOWN, Ky. (AP) — Michael Blowen can step outside his house any day of the week and visit retired racehorses at Old Friends, the thoroughbred retirement farm he founded in Kentucky two decades ago that attentively cares for former winners and losers alike.

From his home’s backdoor, Blowen can watch one former racehorse great in particular amble aimlessly in a nearby pasture: Silver Charm, the champion thoroughbred that won the 1997 Kentucky Derby.

“Hey, handsome,” Blowen called out as he sidled up to his longtime friend that now has only four remaining teeth and spends much of his day napping. Silver Charm moved toward Blowen, who fed him a handful of Mrs. Pastures horse cookie crumbs before pouring the rest into a feed bucket. The oldest living Derby winner then wandered to his water trough, sipped and dozed off.

“He’s pretty predictable,” Blowen said. “He knows what he wants, and when he wants it.”

Welcome to Old Friends farm, a 236-acre (95.51-hectare) racehorse retirement community outside Georgetown, Kentucky, where champion thoroughbreds and lovable losers retire in leisure amid the splendor of Kentucky’s scenic bluegrass region, whiling away in the shadows of former glory, then posing for pictures with devoted race fans who — especially during Derby season — visit the farm.

The Derby will be held Saturday. At Old Friends, every day is Legends Day.

For $30, visitors take a guided, 90-minute walking tour while getting up-close looks at some of the farm’s most famous residents, including Silver Charm and I’ll Have Another, the 2012 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner.

Blowen, a former Boston Globe film critic, started Old Friends in 2003 with a leased paddock and one horse. He was just getting started when news broke that 1986 Kentucky Derby winner Ferdinand had reportedly died in a slaughterhouse in Japan.

“Because Ferdinand was a Derby winner, it made a huge difference,” Blowen said of his own campaign to provide a dignified and comfortable retirement for racehorses at Old Friends.

Today, about 250 former racehorses call Old Friends home, whether at the main farm in Kentucky or at three satellite locations.

In Kentucky, Silver Charm’s daily routine is simple: He poses for tour group photos and mingles with neighbors in adjoining paddocks after being let out into his football-field-sized paddock early in the morning. He prefers to return to his barn stall around 3:30 p.m., naps often, but can still break into an occasional run.

“He’ll come down that hill like he was opening the Lone Ranger show,” Blowen said.

Silver Charm has lived at Old Friends for nearly a decade. Attention paid to the 30-year-old Hall of Fame racehorse has come to symbolize the care thoroughbreds deserve in their golden years, long after running their last race or producing their last foal, said Old Friends CEO John Nicholson.

“He is a great reminder that at the heart of our sport, at the heart of the industry, is the horse,” Nicholson said. “He reminds us that the horse has given to us far more than we’ve ever given back, and that we should always try to give back.”

The fraternity of former Derby winners spans horse farms worldwide, including Kentucky, the sport’s epicenter. Once champion racehorses finish racing, stud careers typically begin in the hope that their bloodlines will preserve legacy, and net profit.

Silver Charm followed the same path. After a stellar racing career that included wins at the Derby, Preakness and Dubai World Cup — amassing earnings of nearly $7 million — his stud career started at renowned Three Chimneys Farm in Kentucky, after which he spent years in Japan.

Silver Charm was later shipped to Old Friends, where he’s become a beloved ambassador for the farm.

For a while, two of Silver Charm’s greatest competitors — Touch Gold and Swain — were his Old Friends neighbors. Touch Gold won the 1997 Belmont Stakes in a stretch duel with Silver Charm that denied him the Triple Crown. Silver Charm later defeated Swain at the Dubai World Cup. Touch Gold still lives at Old Friends but Swain died there at age 30 in 2022.

Not all Old Friends residents made it to the winner’s circle. Zippy Chippy, horse racing’s lovable loser for never winning in 100 races, spent his golden years in comfort at the Old Friends farm in upstate New York until his death in 2022.

“At the first part of their lives, they’re doing everything that people are telling them to do,” Nicholson said, adding that Old Friends relies mostly on donations to meet annual operating expenses that reach millions of dollars. “At this stage of their life, we’re doing everything they tell us to do.”

If there’s room, Old Friends tries to accept any thoroughbred that an owner wants to retire there, Blowen said. Owners must surrender ownership and deliver the horse. Old Friends only accepts thoroughbreds and says horses deemed at “great risk” and stallions being returned from overseas receive preference, according to its website.

As the face of Old Friends, Silver Charm symbolizes the life former racehorses deserve, Nicholson said.

“He was a great athlete but since then has been an ambassador for even a higher calling,” he said. “And I think that’s part of his magic.”

For tourist Susan Hale, seeing Silver Charm up close stirred memories of a hunch bet she made at the 1997 Derby.

“I went to the paddock as he was being saddled, and I said, ‘I’m going to put some money on that horse right there,’” Hale recalled of the bet she placed on Silver Charm that won her several hundred dollars and allowed her to pay for dinner with friends at a steakhouse later that night.

Silver Charm won the race in heart-pounding fashion — and a lasting place in Hale’s heart. A framed print of Silver Charm in his prime is displayed in her living room back home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

“He’s actually why I’m here,” Hale said. “The other horses have been beautiful, too, but he’s my favorite.”

Still, Silver Charm’s most steadfast companion remains Blowen, the founder and retired president of Old Friends who can see his favorite horse simply by stepping out his back door.

“Think of the greatest thing you ever laid your eyes on and put it in your backyard, and then you’ll have an idea,” Blowen said of what it’s like to have Silver Charm as a neighbor. “Every day, I get that.”

For two decades, his Old Friends farm outside Georgetown has been home to hundreds of horses — from former Kentucky Derby winners like Silver Charm and Charismatic to plenty of also-rans. Thousands of thoroughbred fans flock to the farm each year to get up-close looks at the retirees, with Blowen sometimes leading the tours.

Silver Charm is the oldest living Derby winner, and the main attraction at the retirement farm. After winning the Derby in 1997, Silver Charm nearly ended a 20-year wait for a Triple Crown by winning the Preakness and then finishing second in the Belmont Stakes. He had been trying to become the first horse since Affirmed in 1978 in complete the feat.

Blowen, 76, announced Wednesday that he is stepping down as president of the more than 240-acre farm nestled in Kentucky’s picturesque bluegrass region. John Nicholson, a former executive director of the Kentucky Horse Park in nearby Lexington, will take over the role starting Feb. 1.

“I started looking a couple of years ago for someone to take over as president,” Blowen said. “The most important thing I was looking for was someone that really, really, put the horses first.”

Nicholson checked all the boxes, Blowen said, pointing to his successor’s own love for horses, his administrative skills and his deep connections in the thoroughbred racing world. In taking the reins, Nicholson said his goal is to continue and enhance Blowen’s vision and values for the retirement farm.

“Old Friends has been at the vanguard of the thoroughbred aftercare movement and I feel privileged to be a part of such an important cause,” he said.

The farm relies on donations to finance expenses to care for the nearly 300 horses now living there — including feed for the horses and staff to operate the farm.

“Today it’s like a multi-million dollar corporation, and it needs somebody that can handle that kind of operation,” Blowen said. “It needs a really good CEO that has managed a much bigger facility than we have. And the only way that we can improve is to get more space for more horses, which means more money, more donations, and an executive CEO that knows how to handle big business.”

While he’ll no longer run the farm on a daily basis, Blowen said he will still be there as goodwill ambassador for his creation, greeting visitors, leading some tours and handling other duties as needed.

Blowen and his wife, Diane White, moved to Kentucky more than 20 years ago after careers at the Boston Globe, where Michael was the newspaper’s movie critic and his wife was a columnist. After the move, he started out working as operations director at the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.

It was then that he came up with the idea — if people become star struck when meeting their favorite movie stars, they might have the same reaction when seeing their favorite racehorses. He opened a retirement farm at Georgetown, which consisted of a few paddocks, his own horse, his pet miniature horse and its first official retiree, Narrow Escape, a mare that was left in a stall following a sale.

He quickly outgrew that farm and then another one in central Kentucky. In 2004, Blowen purchased the permanent home for Old Friends outside Georgetown. It initially consisted of 52 acres.

The farm has expanded through the years, its stalls occupied by former Derby winners like Silver Charm and Charismatic as well as many others that never made it to the winner’s circle. The farm’s reach is global, with Blowen successfully repatriating horses from Japan, South Korea and Italy.

Through it all, Blowen was a hand’s-on farm operator, pitching in to care for the horses. Blowen spent years covering movie stars, but those days take a back seat to his life on his Kentucky farm, he said.

“Nothing in my expectations ever prepared me for how great it is to wake up every day and look out your back door and see Silver Charm,” Blowen said. “It’s just amazing. I get a lot of credit for creating this place, but it really created me.”

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AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

Many schools will remain closed for a second day in Oklahoma Tuesday as teachers rally for higher pay and education funding in a rebellion that has hit several Republican-led states across the country.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed legislation last week granting 15 to 18 percent higher salaries to teachers. But some educators — who haven’t seen a pay increase in 10 years — say that isn’t good enough and walked out.

“If I didn’t have a second job, I’d be on food stamps,” said Rae Lovelace, a single mom and a third-grade teacher at Leedey Public Schools in northwest Oklahoma who works 30 to 40 hours a week at a second job teaching online courses for a charter school.

Oklahoma’s three largest school districts, Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Edmond, will remain closed Tuesday to honor the walkout. Some schools are offering free meals to students aged 18 or younger, while various churches, faith organizations and charitable agencies are providing free day-care services. Spring break was last week in many Oklahoma districts.

Fallin warned Monday that the state budget is tight and there are other critical needs besides education.

“We must be responsible not to neglect other areas of need in the state, such as corrections and health and human services, as we continue to consider additional education funding measures,” the Republican said.

But Democratic lawmaker Collin Walke said teachers should keep up the pressure. Two separate bills pending in the Legislature to expand tribal gambling and eliminate the income tax deduction for capital gains could generate more than $100 million in additional funding each year.

“I think the Republican strategy is to wait the teachers out,” Walke said.

Oklahoma ranks 47th among states and the District of Columbia in public school revenue per student while its average teacher salary of $45,276 ranked 49th before the latest raises, according to the most recent statistics from the National Education Association.

The demonstrations were inspired by West Virginia, where teachers walked out for nine days earlier this year and won a 5 percent increase in pay. Teachers in Arizona are now considering a strike over their demands for a 20 percent salary increase.

In Frankfort, Kentucky, teachers and other school employees chanted “Stop the war on public education,” during a rally at the Capitol Monday.

“We’re madder than hornets, and the hornets are swarming today,” said Claudette Green, a retired teacher and principal.

Schools across Kentucky were closed, due either to spring break or to allow teachers and other school employees to attend the rally.

Amid a chorus of chants from teachers, Kentucky lawmakers considered a new state budget that includes higher spending for public education.

Budget negotiators unveiled a spending plan Monday that includes increased spending for the main funding formula for K-12 schools to be paid for by a 6 percent sales tax on a host of services that had previously been tax-free.

The Kentucky teachers are mad because Republican lawmakers passed a pension overhaul last week that cuts benefits for new teachers. Opponents objected that the pension changes were inserted into an unrelated bill without a chance for public input, and worry that the changes will discourage young people from joining the profession.

Republican Gov. Matt Bevin has not yet signed the bill, but last week tweeted his support, saying public workers owe “a deep debt of gratitude” to lawmakers who voted to pass it.

During Monday’s rally, some teachers, angry at lawmakers who supported the bill, chanted “Vote them out.”

Melissa Wash, a first-grade teacher form Gallatin County who has been teaching for 19 years, said she voted for Bevin, but now plans to become a Democrat. To the lawmakers who voted for the pension overhaul, she said: “You better not count on another year in office.”

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Schreiner reported from Frankfort, Kentucky. AP writers Tim Talley in Oklahoma City and Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico, contributed to this report.